2020 Election Night Hub

This page contains live results for Pennsylvania. My goal is not to predict the winner of the state. In fact, it’s the opposite. My goal is to understand where the tallied votes are from, where the untallied votes are from, and encourage caution in making assumptions on incomplete data.

[TEST MODE: These results are currently fake.]

There are three categories of ballot: in-person, mail-in that has already been received (“returned”), and mail-in that has not yet been received (“outstanding”). Any ballot postmarked by 11/3 and received by 11/6 will be counted. Live Results may include some counted returned mail-ins.*

Updated 7:51 AM

Remaining Live Votes: This number is a naive allocation of votes in the precincts that haven’t yet reported. It is simply the 2016 results times the percentage of precincts yet to report. It serves as an order of magnitude. Do not trust it. Just wait til more precincts report.

*: Mail-In Note. The above projection implies that none of the returned ballots are included in the current Live Returns and assumes that they will vote by party. It’s impossible in the PA data portal to tell how many of the returned mail-ins are included in the counts. The Live Returns contain all of the in-person votes and an unknown fraction of returned mail-ins. In the Scenarios below, I assume that zero mail-ins have been counted, to stay conservative about the range of possible eventual results.

Data Sources
Live results from electionreturns.pa.gov. (Updated 2020-10-30 07:51:12)
Mail-in data from data.pa.gov. (Updated 2020-10-29 21:18:00)

Scenarios

Scenarios
Final outcomes under the following assumptions…

1. Biden wins if mail-ins vote by party and at least 0% of outstanding mail-ins are eventually returned.

2. Biden wins if mail-ins vote like current results adjusted for party[1] and at least 0% of outstanding mail-ins are eventually returned.

[1] - I regress current county-level results on party registration. Then apportion mail-ins using those results. This assumes that in-person voters are representative of registered voters and in-person Democrats vote like mail-in Democrats (and Republicans like Republicans). This may or may not be valid.

Maps of Current Results

Maps of Live Results Change in Pct from 2016

Scatter of Change

Mail-Ins

County Histograms

Adams Allegheny Armstrong Beaver Bedford Berks Blair Bradford Bucks Butler Cambria Cameron Carbon Centre Chester Clarion Clearfield Clinton Columbia Crawford Cumberland Dauphin Delaware Elk Erie Fayette Forest Franklin Fulton Greene Huntingdon Indiana Jefferson Juniata Lackawanna Lancaster Lawrence Lebanon Lehigh Luzerne Lycoming McKean Mercer Mifflin Monroe Montgomery Montour Northampton Northumberland Perry Philadelphia Pike Potter Schuylkill Snyder Somerset Sullivan Susquehanna Tioga Union Venango Warren Washington Wayne Westmoreland Wyoming York

All Data